The keys to immigration reform

Obama, Congress set to attempt first thorough update of laws since 1986

Is the United States about to make a breakthrough on illegal immigration, one of its most emotional and intractable controversies?

Congress and President Barack Obama plan to tackle the issue as early as next month. Some lawmakers have begun floating legislative proposals. Many activists across the ideological spectrum — immigrant advocates from Chula Vista to New York City, tea party members from Oceanside to Miami and business leaders from San Diego to Washington, D.C. — rank immigration overhaul as second in priority only to the “fiscal cliff” and related economic concerns.

If Washington succeeds, it would manage a feat not seen in nearly three decades.

The key is to solve this thorniest of questions: What should the government do with the roughly 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States?

Options include granting a pathway to citizenship, giving limited residency status to some or all of them, and boosting deportation efforts.

Any residency allowance for unauthorized immigrants likely would be paired with greater border security and worksite enforcement. But that aspect is also being disputed: Some legislators believe the U.S.-Mexico border has become well fortified in recent years — triple fencing between San Diego and Tijuana, drones flying over the Rio Grande area and more Border Patrol agents everywhere — but others said much still needs to be done.

“It is hard to overestimate the stakes on this issue,” said John Skrentny, director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California San Diego.

“First, it obviously matters greatly to the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the U.S.,” he added. “Second, reform is a crucial part of America’s political future because Latinos care about immigration reform, and Latinos are a rapidly growing part of the electorate. Third, members of Congress continually attach other issues to any reform bill. This means that reform is going to affect policy that matters a great deal to other stakeholders.”

The White House and Congress seem to agree that the time has come for a legislative breakthrough on the issue. After Latinos resoundingly backed Obama in last month’s presidential election, Republicans and Democrats have pledged to end the standoff.

This will be the first attempt at a thorough update of U.S. immigration laws since 1986, when President Ronald Reagan approved a sweeping amnesty that has since benefited 3 million unauthorized immigrants. That package also included border- and workplace-security measures that have been widely denounced as inadequate or poorly enforced.

This time around, experts said Congress most likely will approve pieces of legislation separately over months or even years. Proposals that could receive early attention include the DREAM Act, which would provide a pathway to U.S. citizenship — through college or the military — for those brought here illegally as children.

Democrats favor a comprehensive plan that includes a citizenship process for unauthorized immigrants, certain provisions for heightened border security, improvements in visa processes and other changes to the overall system.

Republicans emphasize the need to bolster border security and intensify other enforcement programs first. They also prefer a more selective approach to immigration reform, such as increasing the number of visas for immigrants with advanced degrees in math and science.

“The political will to tackle the tougher questions of immigration will depend on whether politicians and parties believe they can make electoral gains, or avoid electoral losses, by addressing them,” said Rosco Williamson, associate professor of political science at Point Loma Nazarene University. “It would also be huge to whichever political party is able to demonstrate it is willing to tackle issues important to the growing Latino demographic, but also avoids caricaturing immigration as ‘the Latino issue,’”

Here are key points almost guaranteed to be part of any immigration debate in Washington:

Unauthorized immigrants

By far the largest elephant in the room has been the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the United States. Many of them own homes, work, started families and have been in the country for more than a decade.

Since the November elections, several high-profile GOP members have called for a legalization program but have found it difficult to garner support from conservatives.

“There should not be an amnesty in any form whatsoever for the folks who are here illegally, period,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine. “They need to get in the back of the line, behind those who are trying to come over legally.”

Any legalization program should not be as widely available as the 1986 amnesty, said Jim Dorcy, retired senior special agent for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, which became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

He favors limited allowances such as the DREAM Act and measures designed specifically for industries desperately needing more workers, such as agriculture and engineering.

“An amnesty, once given, is kind of a future promise that the government will do it again,” he said. “I think that happened last time more than anything. It’s a signal that we are soft on illegal immigration.”

Democrats said this is the right time to create a pathway to citizenship for the unauthorized, fostering assimilation and civic participation.

“The ideal would be to have a bill that encompasses as many people as possible,” said Mariaelena Hinacapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles. “If we have an immigration reform bill that only benefits 30 percent of the people, then it doesn’t really address the issue.”

Angela Kelley, vice president of immigration policy and advocacy for the Center for American Progress, said any proposal that includes legality without citizenship for the unauthorized population is a “non-starter” because it would create a group of second-class people.

To encourage responsibility and discourage fraud, immigration advocates said, a legalization program should include background checks, payment of certain fees and other requirements. They also said it should eliminate the need for specialized immigration programs by incorporating labors in various industries and young people who might qualify for the DREAM Act.

Border security

Democrats and Republicans alike stress the importance of border security, but disagree on what level of security is sufficient.

Republicans are skeptical of any plan that pairs security with avenues for legal residency. During the Reagan era, Dorcy said, there was little follow-through on security measures that were supposed to accompany amnesty. At the time, even some Border Patrol agents were pulled from their regular duties to help process amnesty applications.

“Border security is first. Without that, no immigration reform works,” Hunter said. “I’m not going to vote for anything else until the national-security aspect of border enforcement is taken care of.”

Some immigration analysts said border enforcement is the best it has ever been. The Department of Homeland Security has released figures that show record-high deportations and record-low apprehensions along the country’s northern and southern borders. And migration experts said the number of unauthorized immigrants entering the United States is now about the same as those leaving, creating a “net zero” effect.

That ratio is not good enough, Hunter said, especially because he believes the weak U.S. economy has been more of a deterrent to migrants than enforcement by the Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Other Republicans call for the U.S.-Mexico border to be “sealed” by further bolstering border-security staffing, introducing better sensors and related technology and stiffening penalties, including prison time, for unauthorized immigrants.

Democrats counter that nearly every immigration law passed since the amnesty legislation in the late 1980s has addressed security. They also said the number of border officers has reached an all-time high, that more employers than ever use the E-Verify program to check workers’ legal status and that authorities are conducting an unprecedented number of I-9 workplace immigration audits.

Worksite enforcement

This is one of the most complicated areas of enforcement. It pits security hawks — who support workplace raids and want all employers to screen workers using E-Verify and other means — against people who say businesses already do the best they can to vet applicants and follow employment laws.

Over the years, some industries such as agriculture and meatpacking have pushed back against requirements they felt would push them to become de facto immigration officers. Leaders of these industries said it is difficult to get enough U.S. legal residents to apply for these jobs.

Despite past discord, the issue of worksite enforcement may generate little debate when Congress takes up immigration reform next year. Republicans are angling to make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses, and Democrats may accept that trade-off in exchange for gaining GOP backing for giving unauthorized immigrants already in the U.S. a path to permanent residency.

Legal immigration

Comprehensive immigration reform could include new measures dealing with visas, guest workers and other permitted immigration to the United States.

The STEM Jobs Act, which passed the Republican-controlled House but is not expected to get a vote in the Democratic-led Senate, is being seen as a harbinger of what’s to come. The legislation would allow more international students graduating from U.S. colleges with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to stay in this country.

It also would end the diversity lottery visa system, also called the green-card lottery, which allots a certain number of visas for applicants from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

The White House opposes the STEM Jobs Act, saying it does not want to see individual bills introduced when a larger immigration package is in the works.

Hunter, the congressman from Alpine, and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, prefer to break down the immigration issue into smaller bites. Issa believes reform should start with provisions more likely to find bipartisan agreement — including how to make the U.S. more economically competitive partly by educating the best and brightest immigrants and then keeping them in the nation, said his spokesman, Frederick Hill.